Investigation into the Visual Development of Elamite Civilization from a Visual Perspective

Iran’s south west region centered at Susa, with illustrated findings dating back over 6000 years, is famous for the Elamite civilization. Inhabitants of this region had a significant contribution in the development, improvement and expansion of human civilization. The proximity of Elamite civilization to important civilizations such as Akkad, Babylon and then Assyria which were the main puppeteers of civilization development since fifth millennium to first millennium BC and observed significant visual evolution for 4000 years clarifies the importance of this region and its people to us. Given this background and based on works found and dated by archaeologists, a special kind of visual and content development is observed in works discovered in this region. Due to the importance of this issue and in order to clarify the role of our country in world’s visual culture, this paper is aimed at studying and analyzing the gradual growth and development of pictures through the vitality of civilization. The findings of this paper show that the works belonging to Elamite civilization had been firstly decorative geometric forms; then they had a tendency to summarization and a kind of deformation. Finally, realistic processing and descriptive narratives like contemporary visualizations were seen in different works such as seals, tablets, rock painting and cups. This paper is analytical, presenting documents and surveying the issue based on a library method